Maria Grazia Chiuri Returns to Fendi With “Less I, More Us”

Maria Grazia Chiuri’s return to Fendi is a full circle moment. Long before her wildly successful tenure at Dior, she was part of the Roman house’s creative core, shaping accessories and helping define the language of Fendi in the late 90s and early 2000s. She designed the Baguette bag, which remains one of the most iconic bags of its generation, still coveted today. After nearly a decade at Dior, where she cemented herself as one of the most commercially and culturally influential designers of her generation, coming back to Fendi marks a new chapter.

Photo Credit: Courtesy of Fendi

Grazia Chiuri’s first show back carried weight. Titled “Less I, More Us,” the collection felt like a recalibration. A nod to the five Fendi sisters and the collective spirit that built the house. On the runway, men and women walked together in clothes that blurred masculine and feminine into shared qualities expressed through tailoring, texture, and proportion. The silhouettes moved with the body instead of controlling it. There was a tangible return to tactility, to garments that feel lived in rather than engineered for effect.

As the show notes put it, these clothes were meant to “bear witness to a life lived.” They were designed to accompany our lives, our emotions, our desires. That idea of wardrobing ran through everything. Not looks built for a single moment, but pieces that fold into daily reality. After the show, Chiuri spoke plainly about dissolving the line between men’s and womenswear. A great black blazer is a great black blazer, regardless of who wears it. That philosophy showed up in the construction. Jackets cut with precision but worn with ease. Trousers that moved. Coats that wrapped instead of dictated. The focus was not on transformation, but on continuity. Clothes meant to stay with you.

The bags felt like a wink to her early Fendi days. Baguettes in sequins, zebra, leopard, dense embroidery, even shaggy multicolor fur, all built on that familiar silhouette and finished with the signature hardware. Some were slick and black, others unapologetically textured, but they carried that irreverent energy that defined late 90s early 2000s Fendi. It felt less like nostalgia and more like reclamation. The proportions stayed close to the body, straps tucked under the arm, intimate and effortless. A confident reminder of why the Baguette remains one of the most iconic, and endlessly collectible, accessories in fashion.

In the end, “Less I, More Us” did not feel like a slogan. It felt like a homecoming. A designer returning to the house she helped shape, grounded in its craft, confident in its evolution.